Thursday, October 30, 2008

I was trying to find someone to interview for a piece on Passover for WXDU and I found this most amazing person, Manfred Katz, who changed the direction I was heading in. Manfred speaks about living in eastern Europe during the Holocaust. He is a survivor of the Riga Ghetto. This piece is long but stick around; the ending might surprise you.

This piece is about Shirlette, a poet. Besides being a poet she is also a talented musician and lyricist who fronts her own band, called Mosadi. As she talks about what being a poet means to her, you will hear some mellow tunes in the background. Those songs were written by her and are performed by her friends from Tres Chicas, The Carolina Chocolate Drops and other great bands from the area.

This is a portrait of Royce, a former horticulture extension agent who is losing his memory. He wanted me to record the encyclopedic knowledge he has of native plants but the project expanded to include other memories that are important to him.

This was a short interview I did for an audio doc class a while back. Sheila won the hollering contest at Spivey's Corner several years. In this piece she talks about why hollering is important too her culture.

I spent a long weekend in October at the Third Coast Audio Festival. It thinks of itself as the Sundance Festival of innovative audio... and that is not far from the truth. Third Coast offers a lot of learning opportunities. Besides attending some great break out sessions (editing with Deb George!) I also got the chance to practice my pitching skills in front of about 80 people at the pitch session. Peter Clowney at Weekend America gave me some very useful advice on a piece I'm putting together. But the pitching also increased my confidence. When I got back home The Story with Dick Gordon asked me to come in and pitch some ideas. They liked them enough to ask me to come in and freelance for them starting in November.

Anyone who is interested in public radio or audio documentaries or audio art should really think about attending Third Coast next year. Information on this year's conference can be found here: